This invention relates generally to the art of slide fastener manufacture, and more specifically to apparatus for use in assembling sliders with fastener stringers or a fastener chain, by which latter term is meant a continuous length of coupled fastener stringers.
The assemblage of sliders with fastener stringers has heretofore been effected by use of a slider holder which, as the name implies, functions merely to hold a slider in upside-down disposition on a slider rest formed thereon, with the pull tab of the slider telescopically received in a channel extending downwardly from the slider rest. The pair of fastener stringers are manipulated into the channeled slider body, either through its flared front end or contracted rear end, so as to emerge either coupled or uncoupled out of the opposite end of the slider body.
Since the slider holder is effective only to hold the slider in a predetermined assembly position thereon as aforesaid, the smooth guidance of the fastener stringers into and out of the slider depends solely on the manual dexterity of the assemblyman. Above all, for attaching sliders to the respective fastener lengths of a fastener chain on which bottom stops have been mounted (see FIG. 2 of the accompanying drawings), the coupled stringers of the fastener chain must be carefully threaded into and out of the successive sliders by utilizing the narrow, longitudinal tape spacings between the rows of interlocking fastener elements. In case a pair of oppositely directed sliders are to be assembled with each fastener length of the fastener chain (FIG. 7), the threading of the chain through the sliders requires an even higher degree of manual skill and mental concentration on the part of the assemblyman.
Thus, as will be evident from the above noted state of the art, the difficulties involved in assembling sliders with a fastener chain or stringers have been a serious bar to the truly efficient manufacture of slide fasteners.